Showing posts with label Lisel Mueller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lisel Mueller. Show all posts

Sunday, April 21, 2024

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

 






Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.




~ Lisel Mueller
from Second Language
Monet Refuses the Operation
with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana
art by Monet




Monday, July 6, 2020

the exhibit










My uncle in East Germany
points to the unicorn in the painting
and explains it is now extinct.
We correct him, say such a creature
never existed. He does not argue,
but we know he does not believe us.
He is certain power and gentleness
must have gone hand in hand
once. A prisoner of war
even after the war was over,
my uncle needs to believe in something
that could not be captured except by love,
whose single luminous horn
redeemed the murderous forest
and, dipped into foul water,
would turn it pure. This world,
this terrible world we live in,
is not the only possible one,
his eighty-year-old eyes insist,
dry wells that fill so easily now.





 ~  Lisel Mueller
from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems

art: tapestry from the middle ages. Designed in Paris about 1500,
 are considered to be some of the greatest surviving masterpieces
 of medieval European art. They depict a lady flanked by a lion
 and a unicorn, surrounded by an enchanting world of animals, 
trees and flowers. One of the most intriguing aspects of these
 six large-scale artworks is the mystery of their origin and meaning.
 
with thanks to whiskey river


 

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

bedtime story









The moon lies on the river
like a drop of oil.
The children come to the banks to be healed
of their wounds and bruises.
The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises
come to be healed of their rage.
The mothers grow lovely; their faces soften,
the birds in their throats awake.
They all stand hand in hand
and the trees around them,
forever on the verge
of becoming one of them,
stop shuddering and speak their first word.


But that is not the beginning.
It is the end of the story,
and before we come to the end,
the mothers and fathers and children
must find their way to the river,
separately, with no one to guide them.
That is the long, pitiless part,
and it will scare you. 
 
 

- Lisel Mueller
from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems
 photo by ansel adams
with thanks to whiskey river
 
 
 

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

why we tell stories





Because we used to have leaves 
and on damp days 
our muscles feel a tug, 
painful now, from when roots 
pulled us into the ground 

and because our children believe 
they can fly, an instinct retained 
from when the bones in our arms 
were shaped like zithers and broke 
neatly under their feathers 

and because before we had lungs 
we knew how far it was to the bottom 
as we floated open-eyed 
like painted scarves through the scenery 
of dreams, and because we awakened 
and learned to speak 

We sat by the fire in our caves, 
and because we were poor, we made up a tale 
about a treasure mountain 
that would open only for us 

and because we were always defeated, 
we invented impossible riddles 
only we could solve, 
monsters only we could kill, 
women who could love no one else 
and because we had survived 
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, 
we discovered bones that rose 
from the dark earth and sang 
as white birds in the trees 

Because the story of our life 
becomes our life 

Because each of us tells 
the same story 
but tells it differently 

and none of us tells it 
the same way twice 

Because grandmothers looking like spiders 
want to enchant the children 
and grandfathers need to convince us 
what happened happened because of them 

and though we listen only 
haphazardly, with one ear, 
we will begin our story 
with the word and



~ Lisel Mueller
from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems



Friday, May 17, 2019

steps out of the circle









The self steps out of the circle;
it stops wanting to be
the farmer, the wife, and the child.

It stops trying to please
by learning everyone's dialect;
it finds it can live, after all,
in a world of strangers.

It sends itself fewer flowers;
it stops preserving its tears in amber.

How splendidly arrogant it was
when it believed the gold-filled tomb
of language awaited its raids!
Now it frequents the junkyards
knowing all words are secondhand.

It has not chosen its poverty,
this new frugality.
It did not want to fall out of love
with itself. Young,
it celebrated itself
and richly sang itself,
seeing only itself
in the mirror of the world.

It cannot return. It assumes
its place in the universe of stars
that do not see it. Even the dead
no longer need it to be at peace.
Its function is to applaud.





~ Lisel Mueller
 from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems
 



Monday, October 28, 2013

things







What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.




~ Lisel Mueller
 from Alive Together
with thanks to writers almanac

As she told Karen DeBrulye Cruz, “I write a lot of poems that have tension between what is going on now in society and what has always been there. My poems are much concerned with history. The message is obvious. My family went through terrible times. In Europe no one has had a private life not affected by history. I'm constantly aware of how privileged we (Americans) are.”

notes from poetry foundation





Friday, April 8, 2011

how would I paint happiness



.



.

Something sudden, a windfall,
a meteor shower. No -
a flowering tree releasing
all its blossoms at once,
and the one standing beneath it
unexpectedly robed in bloom,
transformed into a stranger
too beautiful to touch.


.
~ Lisel Mueller
from Imaginary Paintings
Alive Together: New And Selected Poems
with thanks to whiskey river

.